Descartes Before the Horse

S02E04 - Choose Your Belief: Basilisk, Pascal, or Dogs from Moloch

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 22:00:00 GMT

In this episode, Dr Miller and Dr Zaphir dive into a surreal philosophical roleplay set in a fantasy inn with no vacancies and a knife storm brewing outside. The only way to avoid sleeping on a barstool (or being stabbed by airborne cutlery) is to convince one of three eccentric conference attendees to share their room — but each comes with a belief system you must accept.

You meet:

Roko, a tech bro prophet of the coming machine god, who warns that the Basilisk is watching your tweets and will punish non-believers retroactively.
Susan, a whiskey-sipping Pascalian who offers a cozy wager: believe in God and maybe get cocktails in heaven, or don’t and risk overpriced beer in hell.
Beard Wizard, a twitchy cultist who demands your money and dental fillings to prepare for the arrival of immortal small dogs from Planet Moloch, who definitely does not correspond to any existing real world cults. Super swearsies.

Come join us and see if threats of the afterlife is sufficient to warrant belief.

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S02E03 - Rational behaviour on a desert island prisoner's dilemma

Sat, 30 Aug 2025 06:03:19 GMT

In this episode, Luke throws Liam and our special guest philosopher Dr Sameema Zahra into a sunburnt version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma: an island with not enough water, dubious fishing arrangements, and a suspiciously rickety hut. Along the way we learn who betrays, who stays “mostly consistent,” and how long you should really wait before cannibalism becomes an option. It’s survival ethics with a splash of existentialism and we talk about what it means to be rational in extreme situations.

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S02E2 - A trolley full of werewolves

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 20:58:48 GMT

How many people would you sacrifice to save a loved one? Liam puts his moral consistency to the test in Luke's oddly bloodthirsty version of the trolley problem. It's not trolleys that Liam has to contend with though - it's werewolves!

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S201 - I just Kant deal with this Cave

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 04:48:24 GMT

On this new season of Descartes Before the Horse, Dr Liam Miller takes on the role of dungeon master and throwing an unwitting Dr Luke Zaphir up against Plato's Cave. Can he escape the cave and gain true knowledge of things? And while role playing as the folksy Immanuel Kant no less! It's a tough job to escape the Cave to perceive the truth of the universe while still maintaining his rigid morality? Or will he throw Plato out of a window and not bother?

Theme music:

"Aquarium" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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EP14 - Should we welcome our new AI overlords?

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 01:49:36 GMT

Should we be worried about ChatGPT? What is it good at? What should we let it do? Should we let AI make decisions for us?

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EP13 - Which personality tests work?

Mon, 02 Jan 2023 22:28:53 GMT

In order to how we can best discover ourselves, Dr Zaphir and Dr Miller explore a variety of psychological and philosophical tests and their value for self-reflection.

The mini IPIP test for the big five personality traits everyone has (Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, Extraversion)

The Myers-Briggs test for 16 personalities

The RIASEC career and personality test

The Kinsey Scale for sexual orientation

The Autism Test (should not be taken as indicative or diagnostic)

Goofy tests for fun like Lord of the Rings

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EP12 – does the alt-right make any good points about men?

Tue, 06 Dec 2022 01:16:32 GMT

What is masculinity anyway? Is gender identity is under siege from an onslaught of feminist propaganda? We take a charitable look at Jordan Petersen, Andrew Tate, Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro – and examine the stated beliefs and rhetoric of some of the most influential speakers in the conservative movement. Where is it that men should go from here?

To see the sources used in this episode:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5jN8c8UEChWYcPUJ7LjiNrSGSgTBObus

If you have questions, comments, or a topic you'd like to share, email us at horsedescartes@gmail.com

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Ep11 - Should we be teaching students how to protest?

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 04:33:10 GMT

Should we be teaching students how to protest? Should a teacher get involved in political discussions with students and reveal their biases? Is it better to teach practical skills that will be of immediate tangible benefit to students? Or perhaps it’s better to teach controversy, not values? All of these ideas, good and bad are discussed with Dr Peter Ellerton from the Critical Thinking Project.

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EP10 - Are we required to love our families?

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 04:08:51 GMT

Luke and Liam explore what love is. Are we obliged to love our parents? Must declarations of love be met with actions of love? What do we owe to our children? To our parents? Must we be grateful for being born? We didn’t ask for it after all.

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EP9 - Being a zombie is underrated

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 01:32:06 GMT

Dr Peter Ellerton joins Luke and Liam in this discussion about zombies, both literal and philosophical. Is it possible for a human to be alive and functioning but without consciousness? What about dogs? Are mushrooms the next evolution in human development and should we bow to their fungal supremacy?

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EP8 - Should we use gendered pronouns?

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 03:25:32 GMT

Liam and Luke explore whether there are any good reasons to (not) call someone by their preferred gender pronouns.

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EP7 – Is it immoral to be rude?

Wed, 07 Sep 2022 23:34:38 GMT

Luke and Liam look at whether disobeying social etiquette is a form of unethical behaviour. They explore some philosophically dense and problematic questions such as ‘are we bad people if we don’t return a shopping trolley to the corral?’, ‘are we obligated to delete someone’s search history?’, and ‘is it rude to leave our headphones on to discourage talking to people?

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EP6 – Is it okay to laugh at racist jokes?

Tue, 14 Jun 2022 06:50:16 GMT

Luke and Liam are joined with UQ’s Professor Deborah Brown as they discuss the philosophy of humour. Is it alright to laugh at cringeworthy anti-feminist humour? What makes a joke humorous in the first place? Should anyone find Borat funny? And is the toilet the location of all our best work as a culture?

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EP5 - Is monogamy still relevant today?

Thu, 19 May 2022 03:55:14 GMT

Liam argues that it’s still best in contemporary societies to have one partner. Luke argues that polyamory is the way of the future. Both agree that the Brady Bunch and the 6 people from FRIENDS were polyamorous relationships.

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EP4 - No one should be able to own capital goods

Fri, 29 Apr 2022 03:21:43 GMT

Liam takes a stand against capitalism in this episode, arguing that no one should be able to own the means of production, and that we should eat the rich.

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EP3 - Humans should be bred in birthing pods

Fri, 29 Apr 2022 03:19:47 GMT

Luke argues that we should take the human element out of pregnancy and breed babies in specially made robot wombs, solving any number of social, health and gender issues.

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EP2 – Have aliens been with us for centuries?

Fri, 29 Apr 2022 03:04:38 GMT

Luke and Liam wonder whether Roswell and Area 51 were cover ups, if all sea life and crabs are in fact aliens, and whether biblical encounters with angels were actually close encounters of the third kind.

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EP1 - Was the moon landing faked?

Fri, 29 Apr 2022 01:43:28 GMT

Luke and Liam look at the evidence against the moon landing occurring, question whether we even had the technology to do so, and question whether President Nixon would’ve lied about it to look strong for the Russians.

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